EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures has hired Dante Harper to adapt Foundation, the groundbreaking Isaac Asimov science fiction trilogy which Roland Emmerich is developing to direct. Emmerich has been attached since the studio acquired the property in early 2009 when he and former Centropolis partner Michael Wimer won a multi-studio auction as the rights became available. Originally published as a short story series in Astounding Magazine in 1942, Asimov’s Foundation is the complex saga of humans scattered on planets throughout the galaxy, all living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. The protagonist is a psycho-historian who has an ability to read the future and sees that the empire will collapse imminently. He sets out to save the knowledge of mankind from being wiped out. Robert Rodat was first writer on the project.

Harper broke onto the scene with a Timothy McVeigh biopic called Dreamland that Plan B is producing. He wrote Black Hole for David Fincher at Paramount and did the production rewrite worl in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which stars Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton. Harper’s big sale came when his script All You Need is Kill was acquired by Warner Bros. The film is on a fast track, with Doug Liman directing. The studio is out to cast and the film is a priority. Harper is repped by CAA and Management 360.

This becomes the second major development on a work by the late Asimov. 20th Century Fox, which previously adapted Asimov’s I, Robot into the Will Smith hit, just hired director Henry Hobson, screenwriter John Scott 3 and producer Simon Kinberg to team on The Caves Of Steel, a futuristic murder mystery.